besides insanity and sluggishness, one of the various reasons for the lateness of the next blondie album is that we’re as usual currently embroiled in the dilemma of attempting to satisfy the various higher-ups (who our manager Alan calls the ‘gate keepers’) record co. heads and programmers, in that order, with our ability to produce what they consider a hit… this sounds like a simple thing, regardless of it being negative or positive when in fact it is really complicated… the idea that a hit is a piece of music that appeals to the largest cross section of listeners seems finally to be only a small part of the current equation… its like a filter has been added to the relation of artist and audience as people are more and more conditioned to accepting and then eventually really liking whatever is presented to them… somehow the boredom and frustration of the society has caused a complacency (laziness) and maybe no one really gives a shit anymore… hollywood is the main example, could ‘taxi driver’ or ‘midnight cowboy’ become popular mainstream films now? so what i used to think was a fairly simple thing: one puts out a song and people either like it or not has now turned into this crazy science based on marketing, demographics (age groups), and programming formats (all sort of categories like urban this, adult bla bla, etc etc etc) as well as about ten other things that i either cant think of or havent bothered to memorize, so although this sounds like im complaining which i am, this is still something that i hear people in the music biz talking about all the time now… look in billboard or one of the various music periodicals and find articles like “why music sucks” regularly
im only bringing this up cause one of the faithful “Paul” sent me this really cool bit of writing, no matter how crazy this sounds im pretty certain that there is some reality to it, whether or not stuff like this is consciously perpetrated by radio, record companies really doesnt matter, the fact remains that the conditions described do really exist, that even if the good and bad stuff isnt being deliberately eliminated the result is the same as if it were
so check this out and dont be discouraged by my rants i think the new record is one of our best etc etc

[included with permission of the original author Paul Jon Watson with special thanks to Joe Gallagher. – Ed.]

NO MORE HITS

Listening to NPR radio pledge drive speakers last week, drumming the audience for contributions, my full attention was drawn from my work to what was being described as a long term conspiracy against the musical arts. The announcer was pointing out that the public radio music stations are at least largely free of the influence of commercial pressure upon program content. He contrasted NPR radio programming with commercial programming in the light of the long-standing practice of the latter to first market-test all new recordings with small samplings of public response to them. If the public rates the recordings very highly or very poorly, both types of recordings are prevented from being aired on all commercial stations throughout the nation. The reasoning for this is that market analysts claim that if the music is enjoyed overly much by the listening radio audience, they will be so distracted by the pleasure of it that they will not be attentive to the commercial messages the station is broadcasting after the music is heard. And conversely, if the music played generates negative feelings in the listening audience, the listener will be in a poor frame of mind to be receptive to the commercial messages that follow it. So about the upper ten to fifteen percent of all top-rated submitted music as well as the bottom 15 percent of the poorest rated submitted music is routinely clipped off and suppressed by the broadcasting industry and our culture and the listening public is thereby effectively protected from experiencing the regular emergence of hits and immortal standards that formerly graced our airways and our hearts. Always wondered why the big hits stopped appearing around the late seventies and early eighties or so and why audiences are still hungry for the performances of the now geriatric but still very popular vocalists and music groups who brought them to us decades ago.

thanx for listening
   chris

everyone keeps mostly asking about 1…when the record is coming out, and 2…if there are plans about coming to the UK… im tempted to write 1… i dont know and 2… i dont know, which is closer to the truth as far as a real answer , but i think the record will be at least by sept. if not sooner and a trip to the UK may be after that Debbie is coming here now to do a vocal on another song that may be included… the reasons for the slowness of the release include all manner of inrigues and inner group/corporate/production politics aside from just the standard thing of us being asked to add more stuff after “completing” what we thought was the whole project… also issues of mixing, transferring etc etc…. i think rehersals start in june and i look forward to seeing you all and all that jazz… actually im kind of overworked right now so this is brief perhaps ill detail later on meanwhile ive discovered why im always broke; check out this amazing unsolicited reply to my badtz maru fan letter at: http://www.badtz-maru.com/site/html/support_11.html and i thought it was cause of the record companies or taxes or such, little did i know chris

at the editing joint with “drive” i just feel like i should write something even though i’ve not too much to report… i keep getting a few letters everyday or so, as usual many nice words of encouragement, and anticipation, everyone waiting for the record…the record appears to have an overall motif of a fire sprit… like ‘elementals’… spirits are in everything surrounding the human world,… years ago when i was at the school of visual arts i had a teacher who was deep into various occult and esoteric fields, he came up with some interesting stuff for example i recall his relating the phrase from the bible “go thou forth upon/on one knee”with the hanged man of the tarot who though upside down suggests kneeling… anyway, he saw a picture i’d taken of blue water in a swimming pool and pointed out a shape that the camera had captured that he said was a ‘water sprite’… and yeah often photos of trees and of the random shapes of nature will reveal some forms of things that the eye wont necessarily make out on its own… {people call nature chaotic but when one steps back from the human world, its so called orderly forms are subject to the same wild rules that apply to “nature” (i’m told that the Japanese had no word for nature until their contact with the western world, if everything in ones reality exists how can one then divide that reality into realms of “nature” and non-“nature”)… point being that from an airplane the lights of a big city are as chaotic as stars, streets like veins and arteries… i think its the straight lines of human organization that eventually will be seen to be illogical, that the structure of the universe is chaos and our struggle to overlay order is some kind of ancient fear response (the visual art of schizophrenics is frequently based on symmetrical motifs)… some of you may be familiar with that fantastic series of paintings of cats by one Louis Wain that morphed into amazing symmetrical mandalas as the artist gradually lost his “reason”…there are a lot of his regular cat paintings on view around the net but this set here are always to be found in discussions of schizophrenic art as their progression from cheerful kitties into shapes that resemble pure energy is apparently quite unique… one thing that is great to me is how his ‘sane’ cat illustrations are very dated in their victorian style and sensibilities while these guys here are so timeless and futuristic

Wains cats are fantastic in their so called madness… im also struck by the amazing similarities between them and indian, eastern mandalas and religious art, these similarities very specifically support Jung’s archetype theories and as usual im surprised that i’ve never encountered them in discussions thereof… i mean check out the central cat pic, doesn’t it totally look like an indian rug or print? these ‘paisley shapes also relate to fractals, they’re the stuff of the inner mind thats the same for everyone}… as usual i’ve digressed… so we all really know that all the explaining of science and mathematics is really all subjective , that there are no facts only opinions… my opinion is that when Rob Roth was taking pictures of flames to use for our record/cd cover he was close enough to the ‘other side’ to get a shot of some kind of dragon like spirit creature made of fire and we’re gonna use that for cover art, its pretty amazing and thats what i was trying to explain here, i wanted to tell you something about the record that im pretty sure’s not gonna change… the real scoop i suppose is that this is likely gonna be the first cover with a graphic rather than a picture of the band… Rob did do a whole new shoot which will naturally be in the thing but the actual cover that he did is so cool, this one image that is so weird and great i think it conveys something intangible that everyone will like… related to that here’s a story that i dont think you know: ok, again although im quoted somewhere as saying “the hunter” record is my favorite this isn’t the case, im not sure where that came from, interviewers have a tendency to sort of hear what they want to, anyway i wouldn’t say any of the records were ‘favorites’ as i tend to see them as all one thing anyway… so… everyone knows that the ‘hunter’ cover just blows big time, eats the big one etc. etc. the original idea was to get a really great make up artist like Rick Baker or such and have everyone done up as half animal, sort of ‘island of dr. moreau’, then the photograph was supposed to be dark, kind of old-master brown tone, a bit like our first one or like the first two stones albums, just simple and dramatic, portraits of these animal people with the title… right? got that? easy right? HAH! so even though the idea was there for SIX FUCKING MONTHS!! of course it all got right down to the last minute and the lousy existing cover is how the chrysalis art director squeezed it out… now somewhere in there after the session was done and we were disappointed to say the least a couple of guys showed up at our office with a really great cover design that they had worked up on their own, it was mainly a gritty black and white picture of a woman cropped from the neck down, no face, she’s wearing a trenchcoat, legs with high heels, and on a leash she’s got a cheetah… so what’s the punchline? i guess you know… we liked that but got talked into putting the awful band shot on the cover since “there had to be a picture of debbie, the band, bla bla etc” i dont know maybe it wasn’t up to us… anyway and i’ve always regretted not getting the cheetah picture on the ‘hunter’ cover, it would have changed the tone of the whole record, instead of looking like some piece of forced commerciality it would have suggested what it actually was which was a much more experimental recording… the two guys who had he picture are out there somewhere, i’ve never seen it again, maybe somebody knows and perhaps we could put it on a re-release someday
  thats the story… this is rock trivia really and though i may sound pissed off i try very hard not to be tempered by loss or regrets and most of the time am successful in just going forwards
   thanks again    keep sending pictures
      chris (i didnt know this was gonna be so long)

Firstly I’ve got to say that I feel really genuinely lucky to be able to hear from all of you like this, I cant thank you all enough for your comments, suggestions etc. thanx also for the pictures… mostly everyone wants to know about the record and tour in that order… simply the record keeps getting pushed back cause its just not done yet… we are still working on mixes and adding a few more songs though there are I think 14 recorded… it does seem like a long time but the time spent working on it is going to have an effect on what it is, maybe in future we’ll have a different kind of focus… we have agreed to do another record after this one anyway… touring is both fun and a real grind at the same time, its tough leaving ones daily life to sit around hotel rooms but its great to travel around and see people, doing shows etc… you guys all know all this stuff though Yes, I do get overwhelmed by things and I sincerely appreciate your words of encouragement, you are all the best, its really great to know that others are out there with the same perspective on things, that I’m not completely isolated the way I and I’m sure a lot of you often feel I’ll write at length in a while, I just woke up today and was checking mail and wanted to thank you all Love, peace Chris

Thanks again… the volume of stuff has apparently picked up, due to the bravo show, I don’t know really… actually I don’t really know when the next record is going to be out We are still recording material which is slowing it down, it feels to be taking forever and I’m now hearing it may be as late as sept. however it seems that we’ll be on tour this summer, some of you said you saw dates on the site but I haven’t checked… I got a letter from “Tommy” who is a fan of the raw aspects of our first two records, he said that he was saddened to think of us being concerned with having a hit… believe me I’m often conflicted by my position, should I give a fuck about anything or not?… lately I just find it hard to keep art as a center in my life anyway… the world is becoming so absolutely massively fucked that I at times feel kind of insane anyway… how the fuck can I feel excited about music when I can hear stuff on car commercials that’s equal if not better to stuff that’s on the radio… I know for a fact I watch entirely too much TV… its as bad as cocaine; you hate yourself while you’re doing it but can’t stop… other night was the same old crap with a new slightly slicker all inclusive approach: “the corruption of Americas children” (or some such title) who saw this dumbness?: raise hands… anyway the same old half assed sensational approach… that guy, the host whose name escapes me blaming rock music, video games, wrestling, hip hop and various other forms of youthful expression for everything that’s wrong and as usual completely avoiding the actuality of the situation; namely that the portrayal and acting out of violence and angst that are contained in many of these forms is not the cause of, but merely a reaction to the larger overall… cause and effect mixed up… but as far as mixed up goes I don’t recall ever being as personally confused by the state of affairs around me as I am now… the other week on the front page of the daily news or the post (one of the two kind of daily national enquirer’s that are new yorks excuses for newspapers) there’s a picture of the dude who got caught fighting with ‘the enemy’ in Afghanistan, now we all know this guys ass is grass and here’s this big half page color picture of him that looks like something right out of some fucking bondage magazine; wide black strips around his bare chest, black blindfold the whole deal, he looks like he’s propped up and tied to a board or something as well, this is the front page of the goddamn daily newspaper, right,? and then here’s the punch line: this isn’t even a current fucking picture! The caption says it was taken months ago when he was first captured!!! So what the hell is the point of putting this sicko pin-up out there and is that any less violent or angst provoking than seeing Diamond Dallas Page bang somebody in the head on Raw? Yeah… anyhow this kind of stuff is making me doubt my own sanity at times…so much for reality… I loved ‘death to smoochy’ and it does my heart good to see Robin Wms. Getting out of his walt disney phase also to see it getting put down by various offended critics is cool, panic room stunk, blade 2 was amusing… Thanks again for your comments… send pictures of yourselves… also recruit more fans if you really want to help out… or get people to check out the site here… I mean damn I’d like to do more… somebody send me a hundred million bucks and I’ll do a remake of “plan 9 from outer space” or something Yours till the next full moon Love chris

all, the messages i get somehow keep getting better, i really love getting stuff that discusses views on “reality”, politics, dreams, art, etc. so casually… i feel like i know most of you, thanks for all the comments about bravo, i didnt really get how much i wave my hands around when im talking, pretty weird… the record is plowing along, we’re working on adding some more material, as usual no one can figure out what the “first single” is, this is standard procedure, lots of conflicting stuff about putting out music anyway, pretty obvious that enough money can create a hit record, put out something that fits into current formula or try something different… i think a lot of you are still under the impression that the artist is the one who chooses a “single” and in some cases this may be true, certainly we could insist that whatever record co. go with whatever it was we wanted but then we run the risk of the co. not ‘getting behind’ it, after all one wants to have the people that are promoting their music enthusiastic about what they are doing… today working with large groups of people is difficult, everyone in the arts is affected by corporate committee decisions and this is one point of conflict… everybody knows that films like TAXI DRIVER and MIDNIGHT COWBOY and THE GRADUATE etc. would be completely different if they were made today, certainly no one is going to put out a record that sounds like THE STOOGES first record or THE VELVETS first or TROUT MASK REPLICA or even THE BEATLES WHITE ALBUM for that matter, there are just kind of unwritten guidelines for the way that music is produced now that doesn’t allow for much experimentation… I don’t know maybe everyone knows all this stuff already… I mean I loved METAL MACHINE MUSIC, I used to play it all the time…. I’m digressing, right , committees, companies after all are composed of individuals and one does want to try and keep them excited about working, so the problem is so if we insist on a song and the head of the international promo dept. thinks another one would be better… you get the idea… also the problem of ‘trends’, what ever style is popular now may not be what your fave song fits into so there are radio programmers and others who are theoretically better informed and can make a better decision about what to release… I ( by the way the spelling checker kicked in here and is capitalizing I, hence the change) any way there are just layers and layers of crap that we have to cut through… I always hear people yelling: “but I just want to make art!” that’s some of what ive been doing, my wife Barbara wrote and directed a movie that I shot with a Canon XL-1 which is a high end consumer camera, (on a preview from SHOWTIME, the Deniro, Eddie Murphy movie I noticed that they were being filmed by someone holding the same camera for the tv show in the story) ive been shooting video since about 1970 or so when I took what was probably one of the first tv production courses that had a strictly creative slant at the School for Visual Arts in new york, in those days we used the ancient reel to reel sony portapacks which were gigantic and very temperamental… I shot ELEPHANTS MEMORY at the central park bandshell maybe the summer of ’71, that was before they played with John Lennon, did some early cable tv shows etc. ive got about 8-10 hours of stuff of us on tour from the early 80’s, us making AUTOAMERICAN etc. I’m still trying to figure out what to do with that and with all the footage of the “maria” tour period of which there’s a lot, ideally id like to stick it all together, do a documentary from a more personal inside point of view so Barbara’s movie is called “DRIVE”, is going to be a short, maybe a half hour… its harder for me to be objective about this than about the music, I think its really great but I cant tell how prejudicial my view is… we’re almost done with the first rough version but I also don’t know exactly what’s going to happen with it when its done, try to get it in festivals etc. she and I were both interested in trying to do something good with low, almost no production expense as well as not having the pressure of producers for a first attempt at film making… Barbara’s website is MYSTERIOUSMYSTERIES.COM, she’s got more about DRIVE there as well as her comments about life which probably connect with mine in places, on the whole she updates more than I do We’re planning to be at burning man again this year, if any of you find your way out there I’ll be hanging around with the post office people like last year I think that’s it for now I hope this isn’t too redundant… thanks again for all the messages some of the weird poetic dream imagery is great happy Happy Easter and various re-birth celebrations chris

dear all, please forgive the lack of comm’s from here but my computer was moofed for a while and i didnt have time to attend to its need for constant fucking attention(!) very organic this tech crap so a belated happy new year to all, related holidaze etc. ive been trying to keep busy,,, went to L.A. to do some finishing work on the record and came away from that feeling really positive about it, im really happy with how its come out, one of the main thrusts was to keep it as its own thing rather than sound like various styles around now… also make it less generic, i think we’ve succcceeeded in all this, im not sure what the ‘singles’ are the whole thing is quite a totality… DH thinks its some of her best writing as do i, lyrics are really advanced… dont know for sure when its out, certainly by summer… im really looking forward to getting reactions to it ill write a more detailed thing later i just got this thing up and running last night with XP which is pretty cool … again sorry to have missed so much time… yeah, D and myself and Paul did that show MUSICIANS which is on bravo( i think? right?) thats gonna air on the 11th of march ok over and out chris that came out really nicely as well… i liked the performances

this is a bit sooner than id intended to add but once again im greatly cheered to get all the reactions from out there… im continually impressed with how clever all of you are, (Lu thanks for the dream letter) i keep getting all these great statements from the mail:, yeah i think jesus and buddha would probably get booed in this climate also someone wrote “the only difference between a terrorist and a patriot is what side youre on” bravo… plus a lot more cool stuff dont hesitate to send any weird reports of dreams, aliens , bigfoots’; ghosts etc you know i love all that stuff … i used to say i only celebrated halloween … yesss the veil between the worlds is THINNNER etc etc as to current events : so after all the talk about the ‘war’ taking a long time and we should all be prepared for that now its like “shit weve been bombing away for a whole three weeks and it looks like the WAR IS A STALEMATE! SEND IN THE GRUNTS!!” right ? you all saw this ? so are we gonna wind up with another long drawn out (though more popular) war? even better is the deal with the announcements about something about to happen though what? where? who knows only dont worry just be on high alert… things are getting progressivly weirder…. like most of you im in the middle about all this i think american foreign policy since world war two has been the greatest contributing factor to our unpopularity, (what happened to the peace corps.? another fifteen minute deal) but certainly it sucks for a bunch of maniacs to be taking advantage of the freedoms of this country to raise havoc and destruction all very confusing still hope this isnt toooo pointless but the last batch of mail i got was very cool so i figured id put something up to say i read it all halloween tomorrow full moon chris

thanks everyone for the continuing communication… ive finally listened to what is currently the next record in its entirety and feel fairly hopeful about it… it may get out by feb. but im not sure, but it is coming, theres still more work to do on it ive been getting mostly positive comments from you all, i wish i did have answers for everything but… did you see richard gere getting booed at that big rock show at the garden? apparently his asking for ‘compassion’ understanding etc. didnt go down well with all the heros who were in attendance… disturbing and contradictory… as ive been mentioning to people i remember very clearly the reaction to jfk’s killing , that it was somber and fairly dignified, now, everyone jumping on the bandwagon of war and nationalism, selling t-shirts etc. to me the reaction of the media to all of the events since the 11th just feels weirdly gleeful, i keep feeling like so many people are happy to have this stuff to carry on about… just yesterday on tv i saw a head saying that perhaps all we were doing in afghanistan was making people miserable, i was kind of surprised to see such an unpopular view right there in almost prime time meanwhile everyone i know is very sceptical as to the credibility of what is supposedly ‘news’ does anyone really think that the masses are getting even a small part of the real stories? then i saw some dumb assed psychologist saying how people were ‘stressed’ etc. by current events. fears, insomnia,indigestion,general lousy feelings… HELLO! big news that i was just reading about the Mayans, that their culture was rooted in a recognition of ‘terrible beauty’ that surrounds human existance, to me that meant that the natural attraction we have to violence, calamity and blood is not something that needs be covered up and disguised the way it is today, we make our own neurosis and then keep it going oh well very cheerful… i WOULD however like to recommend that everyone try and catch INVADER ZIM which is a fantastic cartoon that plays mostly fridays 9:00 on nickelodeon, Johnen Vasquez is god, a lot of you must be familiar with zim and johnny the homicidal maniac, squee etc those not who like comics should check it all out again thanks all for the comments etc. ill keep writing when i can, cant guarantee any regularity happy halloween all chris

im really pleased to hear from all of you who took time to write, it must have taken over an hour to read the last bunch of mail barry sent… its totally great to know that you all are as smart as you are… a lot of you were in agreement about the waste of energy involved in the drug war, i saw tom clancey on that dumb o’reilly show, he (clancey) is pretty far right but at least he had enough on the ball to say that the only way to keep the hordes of mexican workers from sneaking across the border to get jobs here is to help mexico prosper so that americans would want to go there for work… to that o’reilly, idiot that he is, replied ‘well thats up to mexico’ i guess that telethon last night with all the celebs was pretty much a first, ive never seen any one tv show on almost all channels at once i watched it for a little bit but got irrationaly sad seeing mohammad ali so stricken by illness and turned it off, this morning i woke up still feeling gloomy and depressed but reading the rest of the e-mails from all of you guys (id started them yesterday) turned my mood around everyone seems to be ‘on the same page’ as they say, like myself a lot of you expressed your confusion in trying to figure out your own feelings about whats happened… im kind of surprised that i find the situation as complicated as i do, i try to view lifes events in their simplicity and its frustrating to find myself looking at so many different views of the same things… on one hand i’ve been looking forward to some kind of great change in the way things are in the world, but being confronted with such a brutal reality is a lot more shocking than anything id imagined, (the idea of the post apocalyptic ‘road warrior’ world is appealing but the reality of death and destruction on a huge scale isnt) is this really a turning point? last night i even heard some straight guy on tv talking about this generation selling out to comfort and complacency (although he didnt use those words), this awareness is way overdue, everyone has bought into the ‘big lie’ to one extent or another; no one is well off until everyone is, the world is too small now, how can we be content with our tv’s and cars and all when there are whole countries of people who live below the level of our cats and dogs? all these differences are going to catch up, if not now eventually… im sorry to sound too preachy but this stuff is a reality… as far as the immediate future goes all the advice i can give is the same as before: none of you have to do anything you dont want to, dont stay in jobs you cant stand, survival isnt about being unhappy… try and change things, dont conform thanks again chris sat. sept. 22 ’01